I know this will sound incredibly heterophobic or just naive -- but I guess I find it interesting that it seems the vast majority of men visting these posts are straight yet into anal stimulaton. I don't really see that as any more of a stretch than a man who likes to suck cock, likes to wear dresses or wants a sex change. Physical gender, Gender-identity, sexual-preference and I guess even sex-act orientation seem to me to be four totally independent axes, allowing for, let's see, at least fifteen different configurations of an all-or-nothing sort, not to mention all the shadings in between.

However -- even though it's now suddenly socially acceptable for straight guys to experiment and even continually partake of sex with men, straight, bi, gay or otherwise -- and I know that many straight men way before the present day have enjoyed their wives providing anal stimulation before and during orgasm.

I certainly can respect a heterosexual man not intimidated or emasculated by the idea of actually enjoying anything remotely connected to, well, not my favorite word for it, sododmy. Honestly, that anal prostate stimulation can do what it does seems like taboo knowledge held secret by pruny old southern Bible bitches (pardon, but I live in the south, this is accurage). In less "sophisticated societies, particulary before the word and concept "homosexual" was born in the mid-1800s, and with it, correspondingly, the world of the "heterosexual", such ideas just didn't exists. And pre-Spanish Inquisition, what a man did with his groin area was private, between him and whoever, and more or less accepted.

What I mean is that it shouldn't seem so odd that men who don't want ot be sodomized still might enjoy anal stimulation. I am just betting that the era in India which spawned tantric sex also featured some sort of male anal stimulation -- and that somewhere in the past, a device not so different than an Aneros may even have been used.

But I digress. Let me just ask what I am posting to ask:

Straight Guys:

1. Any idea WHY you are drawn to anal stimulation?

2. How did you realize you like anal stimulation?

3. Is Aneros your first exposure to anal stimulation?

4. What other forms of anal stimulation do you enjoy?

5. Do you engage in anal stimulation (of self) with wife / girlfriend?

6. Do you also enjoy occasional / freqeuent sex with men? If so (and these ARE serious questions):

6.1. What is it that you enjoy about this kind of sex?

6.2. Do you engage in such sex with only other straight men or does their sexual orientation matter?

6.3. How do you differentiate being a straight man having this kind of sex from just being gay or bi? (Traditionally, straight men justify sex with men not making them gay if they are sodomizing rather than being sodomized.)

6.4. Are there things you won't do while having sex with men? (Such as kissing? Giving oral sex? Et cetera?)

6.5 For that matter, do you actually have any interest in anohter man's penis at all, apart from being penetrated?

6.6. Is being penetrated by a dildo, et cetera better, worse or the same as being penetrated by a penis?

6.7. Does penis size count?

6.8. Do you, by any chance, feel, right after orgasming during sex with a man, a sense of confusion, regret or even repulsion about what has transpired? Or anything other than happiness over a good joyous shared ejaculation?

7. If not engaging in sex with other men, is your use of Aneros making you consider it?

8. Any other comments?

(Please understand I am not judging anybody and hope I am not being presumptuous or offensive. I am trying to understand something very basic about male sexuality, which I abandoned as foolish decades ago, but which has been reborn by virtue of Aneros making me keenly aware of how the anal muscles are intrinsically involved in EVERY type of male orgasmic experience while most men are conditioned never to be aware of any sensations coming from anything but their penis. In essence, this is no different from how many women never experience an orgasm till late in life if at all, because understanding of the clitoris has been sketchy and until recent decades, pretty much taboo.)

I don't know if I am offended by this or not. It is carefully worded but has an underlying negative tone. This is my first post but you make a few assumptions I think should be dispelled.

1st: Hetersexual means you ONLY have sex with the opposite sex. You can't have sex with both sex and be considered Heterosexual. Not by definition anyway.

2nd: If you enjoy having any type of sex with both male and female, by definition, makes you bi-sexual. Emphasis on "sexual". Again by pure definition.

3rd: Sodomy is any sexual act considered abnormal or unnatural. So in a way Sodomy is subjective, if you find anal stimulation perfectly natural then its not sodomy. Who says what is and isn't natural/normal.

Last: Sexuality is seperate from intimacy. One can enjoy having bisexual fun but still only have feelings for one sex.

You seem to be trying to corral anyone male who enjoys anal stimulation, into a "partial gay" sterotype or something like that. At least thats the direction I get when I read your qustions.

I am only going to answer one of your questions because I feel its the only one that matters.

Why am I frawn to anal/prostate stimulation? pure and simple it feels REALLY good. No other reason.

I have to second Analpal as far as heterosexual men having sex with other men. You can't be heterosexual and have sex with other men. It's called bi. If you consider (and I'm not talking directly to you Mans Man) yourself a heterosexual man and have sex with another men, then you're in denial of being bisexual. So the problem with your questions 6-6.8 and even question 7 cannot be directed to straight men cause if they did or considered any of that it would make them bisexual. The vast majority of bisexual people (just my opinion) are in denial of the feelings they have(or fantasize about it but don't act upon it) cause it's not socially acceptable (at least not as much as bisexual women are acceptable) and have been made to believe it's wrong by media/family/upbringing/friends.

I discovered the pleasant anal sensations about the age of puberty when I began to explore my body and the onset of rampant teenage hormones. Over the years, I have tried various other sex toys, but since discovering the Aneros, those other toys seem anachronistic to me now and I don’t have any interest in their continued usage. I have engaged in anal stimulation with some of my past sexual partners, but my current Significant Other is not interested in such pursuits, which I’m perfectly O.K. with.

I haven’t ever had a homosexual encounter, so I can’t respond to your multi-part question #6. I haven’t contemplated about having sex with men before or after I began using the Aneros, but curiously I have noticed an increased occurrence of one of my core fantasies relating to women since embarking upon the Aneros journey.

Analpal & Billy11

I have to agree with ‘Tripper’ when he said “My own belief is that we are all sexual animals and each individual resides somewhere along the spectrum and no judgments are necessary.” I find the labeling of individuals (hetero-sexual, bi-sexual, homo-sexual, trans-sexual, pan-sexual, uni-sexual, metro-sexual, etc.) to be somewhat demeaning. Categorizing people may lead to stereotyping which in turn can lead to bigotry, social isolation, ostracism and hate crimes. Let’s just let people be people without labels.

I feel badly that my post has raised such ire -- and feel quite misunderstood. Ironically, what I have been accused of is what is being done to me: misuse of words, bucketing complete strangers and even genders into negative steretypese, posting from the point of view of some conscious or unconscious hidden agenda. All I was attempting to do was gain understanding relating to issues which bewiildler me. The source of my bewilderment stems from exactly what Analpal took issue with -- current usage of terms relating to sexuality are becoming so fluid as to be meaningless. I DO understand. and thought I made this clear in my original post, that an interest in anal stimulation does not make a man gay -- I suppose my general bewilderment has to do with (and PLEASE impute no ulterior motives here) WHY straight men would be attracted to something as taboo as anal stimulation and HOW they approach this where, historically, being anally penetrated was the worst insult a man could possibly endure. In essence, maybe I am trying to comprehend how straight men overcome so much cultural garbage so as to enjoy something natural and good -- and how they integrate this into their gender and/or sexual identities. I am also still quite surprised that gay men, who after all have a natural proclivity for and facility with anal stimulation, do not seem to be found in greater numbers on this web site. Whether this is a mistaken assumption on my part is also something else I had hoped to ascertain. No hidden agenda or crash motives at all here. Not even any negative vibes. Honest.

Words are powerful. Text versus speech is prone to be misunderstood. I respect those who are offended as well and your right to take offense with me -- but believe me you are mistaking my motives -- I have NO negative take on anybody based on their sexual preference. Believe me, I spent many years dealing with this kind of bigotry in working through my sexual identity. I have seen so many permutations and redefinitions of sexual preference in my time, which might make some people's heads spin -- but which I have become so accustomed to that I forget not everybody has been exposed to such diversity and I need to be careful when discussing sexuality, which seems to be the common axis around which each person's universe spins.

Questions I posed relating to same-sex intercourse were intended to apply only to those engaging in it. I carefully numbered ALL questions relating to same-sex activities so as to be clearly subordinate to my question as to whether any straight men were having sex with other men. (Had I been using MS-Word, I would also have indented these questions to undercore their subbordination.

As relates to "straights" / "heterosexuals" having sex with me -- I'm sorry but it does happen -- a lot -- and it does not mean they are gay -- only the man himself can determine his own sexual prefernce. You might be surprised now many "straight" men are having sex with other men -- many just out of curiosity, many just because they enjoy anal stimulation. I know this sounds like a paradox but it is nonetheless true. I have even shared private messages, through this forum, with one sraight man who was beginning to experiment with anal stimulation with another man -- what he told me was that it was only his desire for anal stimulation which interested him, and so as to keep this kind of sex sepaprate from what he has with his wife, he refused to kiss the man he was experimenting with. I have no doubt that this man is straight, but here he is having anal sex. Traditionally, particularly in Mediterranian cultures, many men indulge in sex with other men, but so long as man only penetrates and is not penetrated, he has no reason to consider himself homosexual. In fact, historically, such activity was viewed merely as "homogenital" activity and did not brand those who partook as ANYTHING. Ancient Hebrew priests even debated and wrote decisions absolving gentile converts to Judiasm from any guilt from indulging in the Greek custom of having sex with younger men.

Ultimately, after having heard so much about straight men these days feeling free to experiment if only to learn what sex with another man was like, I just wanted to lern from any men who have actual experience doing it. I will tell you why I am so interested: Sexuality is neither "hetero," "homo," "bi," "auto" or even "a" (as in "asexual") -- sexuality just is. I wish I had known this as a teenager and young adult. I wish I had had the freedom to experiment without guilt laid on me and which I laid on myself as a consequence of growing up in the Bible belt. It took me a very long while, after having lived as both straight and gay, that being bisexual is an acceptable option. For so long, bisexuals were ostracized within the gay community. It was believed there were no bisexuals, only people stuck on the fence between straight and gay. It is still true that many gays get immense enjoyment out of ferretting out "straight" men who are obvious closet cases. I believe it makes some gay men feel in some way superior or at least better about themselves to numb personal pain at being societal outcasts through sterotyping, objectifying and trivializing straights in the same way they have felt judged by them.

Having been so victimized on both sides of the sexual preference fence, I do understand and sympathize with Analpal's taking offense at the idea of being so misjudged -- but I think this was entirely a misconception on his part. I have no fingers to point at anybody.

After reading the post I am now taking pains to write, I not only challenge but would honestly appreciate ANYBODY willing to take the time to go back and extract from my original post textual evidence supporting what has been claimed against mt. All I feel I am guilty of here is perhaps of not having made more concrete word choices, perhaps some subtlies of phrasing and benign attempts at humor. Let me state emphatically, I was not and am not trying to imply ANYTHING about ANY straight men, whether or not they own an Aneros device or enjoy anal stimulation in any form whasoever.

While I had mentioned in my post I hoped I did not offend anybody, I really had not anticipated anybody would actually be offended -- certainly not to the degree which Analpal evidences. I just hope we all can learn something here.

As I see it, what has gone wrong here is all about semantics -- the component of meaning within, in this case, written communication. There are (at least) three kinds of semantic issues I think are in play here:

1) Various definitions of historical, scientific and slang words

2) The writer's intention versus the reader's perception

3) Regional, generational and majority / minority subcultural bias

Certainly other semantic issues can be identified, but for my purposes, these will suffice for now:

1) VARIOUS DEFINITIONS OF HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC AND SLANG WORDS =============================================================The truth is, regardless of dictionary definitions, words have no fixed meanings. Meanings drift over time and across regions and cultural subgroups. However, Analprobe offered some deifnitions unfamliliar to me and which I do not find evidence in the dictionary:

1.1) FORMAL DEFINITIONS=======================Since the irate poster

SODOMY:=======Analpal sates, "Sodomy is any sexual act considered abnormal or unnatural." Where do you cite this from?

The only definition for "sodomy" I can find is "anal sex with a man or woman." This is born out not only in the "Anti-Sodomy" laws still on the books in many states, but also where older Bible translations refer to "Sodomites" where newer translations refer to "homosexuals."

When I first mentioend it, I sated "not my favorite word for it, sodomy." In fact, I resent the word. Funny thing is that the scripture from which it has been derived was totally misunderstood. The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was not in wishing to anally rape two angels posing as travellers, but in offering them no hospitality, in an era when to do so was tantamous to leaving strangers out on the streets to be robbed and murdered in the dark of night. It goes right along with the parable of the Good Samaritan. What is more, as it turns out, the Hebrew word most mistranslated as both "Sodomite" and "homosexual" actually means "male cult temple prostitute" -- these being part of teh relgions of neighboring cultures. Can you wonder why I find the word "sodomite" distasteful?

I was using "sodomy" in my prior post in a sarcastic, bitter, humorous sense -- but this was entirely personal humor -- the word "sodomy" does carry entirely negative connotations -- and I should have made a better, entirely neutral word choice.

I will say that, while Analpal is entirely wrong in stating that "Sodomy is any sexual act considered abnormal or unnatural" -- I do totally agree with what he concludes based on this mistaken definition -- "If you find anal stimulation perfectly natural then its not sodomy. Who says what is and isn't natural/normal."

HETEROSEXUAL:============="Heterosexual" and "homosexual" are not at all scientific words, and have been in existence, as I may have mentioned in my original post, only since the mid-1850s. They refer to much more than sex acts. I think that Analprobe's definition:

"Hetersexual means you ONLY have sex with the opposite sex. You can't have sex with both sex and be considered Heterosexual. Not by definition anyway."

... may be primarily true for the majority of heterosexuals, and makes a decent definition for the word as most people understand it. I agree that, in terms of logic, what Analpal says makes a lot of sense. But a more precise defintion would be "Having a preference or orientation towards being attracted to persons of the same opposite sex."

As relates to irratonal labels, I do continue to get a big laugh out of all bios on gay.com which read literally like this:

One must also keep in mind that men in prison having sex with other men do so primarily only for lack of women, do not continue to have sex with men once released, and NEVER consider themselves anything but heterosexual. Which is either extremely amusing or else evidence of the extreme fluidity of human sexual expression.

I think our society has swung not as far as the sexual tolerance pendulum can go, but far enough to where we no longer have viable terms to define such things as preference of sexual attraction. Such words are just labels anyway, for unique persons with unique feelings which can be expressed in an infinite number of ways. I think people are finally catching on to the fact that our bodies are created so as to allow us multiple ways of sexual expression, and that what ultimatley counts has much more to do with love and affection than genitals. What's how I see it anyway. Of course, onoce the sexual pendulum swings to this point, to where nobody cares who does what with which gender -- that is when the pendulum will swiftly swing back the other way, and we'll start seeing, as in Nazi Germany, "perverts" and "sexual deviants" shipped off to concentration camps, gassed and incinerated along with other "undesirables."

We could quibble over this endlessly and I have already demonstrated more than one example of how heterosexuals can and do have sex with both genders, as well as discussed to death the fluidity with which such definitions are being bandied about these days. In fact, such fluidity really does reflect reality, at least as many sex researchers have statistically proven it to be. Sexuality labels are pretty useless. Most people's sexuality is in shades of grey not all black or all white. And as I tried ot make clear in my original post, people so often confuse sexual preference with gender identity and other gender-based aspects of personality and biology. My personal pet peeve is how so many people equate being gay with being effeminate. Huge numbers of gays are quite effeminate, to be sure,

BISEXUAL:========Analpal states: "If you enjoy having any type of sex with both male and female, by definition, makes you bi-sexual. Emphasis on "sexual". Again by pure definition."

... Again, a pretty good common-consensus definition of "bisexual." And again, it makes not sense to call anybody having sex with both sexes anything else. That definition is good for me.

However ... the definition I just found says: "a person who is sexually attracted to both sexes" -- and I think that says it even better. While many people equate the act with the persuasion, it remains that many do not act on their attractions. Likewise, many do have sex with genders they have no attraction for at all. Consider prostitutes, hustlers, weaker inmates forced to dress as women and become passive partners in anal sex. Men and women who, trapped n loveless marriages, realize they have and begin to indulge same-sex attractions, while continuing to satisfy their spouses, if only to keep them from being suspicious. And then it has to be mentioned that so many gay men and lesbians have had heterosexual experiences -- not only abortive ones when trying not tobe gay -- but occasions where it felt good to be with the opposite sex, so they went with it. And then one more example: survey statistics bear out that very few "straight"-identified individuals have NOT had some kind of homosexual experience in their lives -- and whether these are heteorexual, bisexual or homosexual, who can say?

I like to think of myself as just "sexual."

INTIMACY:=========Analpal states: "Last: Sexuality is seperate from intimacy. One can enjoy having bisexual fun but still only have feelings for one sex."

If Analpal means "romantic" feelings, then I totally agree. What did I say to make it seem I thought something else?

PRESUMPTION:============Analpal sates: "You seem to be trying to corral anyone male who enjoys anal stimulation, into a "partial gay" sterotype or something like that. At least thats the direction I get when I read your qustions."

This is Analpal's presumption, words put in my mouth. Nothing could be further from my mind. I suspect that Analpal read my post colored by his own biases, flew off the handle, and honestly believed me to have made statements and implied judgements which I have no part in. It is so easy for any of us to misread even a single sentence, so that the rest of a paragraph or email or editorial letter becomes colored by perhaps unwarranted rage.

As I mentioned before, I am entirely open to being show evidence of where I, explicitly or impliclty, attempted to corral anybody into anything. In fact, my entire motivation in my post, as already stated, was to gain UNDERSTANDING, not to JUDGE.

I should mention something about me and anal stimualtion as relates to this: it took me about seven years after deciding I was gay to find I loved giving oral sex -- another seven years to realize I craved being pentrated through anal sex -- and another seven years to realize I actually might enjoy being the one doing the penetrating. What I am saying is, here is the one gay man in the USA who was not from the start nuts to take cock anyway he could. So I suppose I do have preexisting biases regarding anal sex. I think it's great to see straight men discover anal pleasure -- I think it will be awesome when Aneros hits critical mass, starts getting sold on late night informercials, becomes a huge fad, and Aneros support groups can be found meeetng -- well maybe not in every church -- but you get what I mean.

Still, as Analpal states, and I believe I also stated in my original post, enjoying anal stimulation does not equal craving anal sex does not equal being homosexual.

I wish it did not have to be said that men and women are constantly experiencing conscious and unconscious same-sex attractions of varous levels of intensity -- as a normal part of being human -- these are indicative of absolutley nothing -- and ceratinly do not brand an individual as a homosexual.

To put a tack in discussion of definitions, what I am about to say may indeed be a presumption but I will say it anyway:

All of Analpal's complaints against me are all about my supposedly wanting to sterotype all anal-hobbyist men as gay -- and in that there is an unmistakable undercurrent of there being something wrong or inferior about same-sex attraction.

May be that my suspicion is basesless. I certainly don't think Analpal is gay, but his reply is of an entirely defensive and nearly every sentence can easily be construed as anti-gay.

You see -- it goes both ways.

are actually offensive in themselves

me belie some undercurrent

2) THE WRITER'S INTENTIONS VERSUS THE READER'S PERCEPTIONS: ========================================================Text communication is intrinsically prone to reading between the lines. It must assume a certain common culture and worldview, and requires the reader to fill in the gaps. We cannot read anything withot reading the lines -- if we did not do so, nothing would ever makee sense. But each of us can only do so with respect to his or her own unique personality and experience. Text messages suffer from the fatal flaw of not recording voice inflection, so that the reader, without even being aware, imputes vocal inflection and writer's intention based on everything from the writer's choice of words to the reader's indigestion. I have, in the past, witnessed, caused and been victimized by this phenomenon. It does pay to take a step back from an email or post whcih incites irritation or rage, and thoroughly read what is actually written, then weigh the possible inflections and intentions based on the text itself.

It's a total cliche but so true that everybody is far better off when we think the best of one another rather than leaping to the worst conclusions. (I feel like a Hallmark card text writer now -- yikes!)

(Most of what I had planned to say in this section was amply covered in intial paragraphs of this post.)

3) REGIONAL, GENERATIONAL AND MAJORITY / MINORITY SUBCULTURAL BIAS ===============================================================I've more or less covered this section above as well. But it goes to what I was saying before about what words mean. "Shag" meant carpet in the 1970s, still is a dance in Myrtle Beach SC, and means fuck in Britain. My mother gets livid when I use the word "lousy" -- because when she was a girl during the depression, head lice was everywhere -- where I never even knew "lousy" referred to "lice" at all. Somebody calls me a "fag" on the street and I'm likely to kick their teeth in -- but in gay bars, everybody's calling everybody a "faggot" in the most affectionate terms. When I was, in my early twenties, invovled in the evangelical church, we had been trained to worry about who was and who was not a Christian, without which we'd never be able to figure out which souls needed saving. But when I visited my parents' house with some church friends, and my mother heard us talking about "so-and-so is a neat Christian" or "what's-their-name doesn't know Jesus" -- she thought we were horrid and judgemental and insisted we all get out of her house immediately.

Gays and straights can really piss one another off without really trying or even meaning to do so. We have so much in common yet live in worlds and with vocabularies so alien to one another. I continue to find offensive the gay enamourment with sneering referenes to heterosexuals as "breeders." Worse even, how many gay men equate all women with the smell of "fish" -- even gay men who have never been "down there" to know what a woman smells or tastes like. Even within gaydom, eveb the lowliest subgroup can always find some smaller, lowlier sub-subgroup to debase. Such terms as "queen", "size-queen", "drama queen", "chicken" (young man), "chicken-hawk" (older man after younger), and even the ubiquitous "A" and "B" list references -- all these do is trivialize and alienate.

I won't even go into all the anti-gay lingo slung around in the straight world.

All I'm trying to say here is that language has no fixed definitions, and is as current only as a molecule of water flowing downstream. It evolves over time, stagnates in geographically remote communities, separates the young and old. A single term or phrase can diverge into mutually unfriendly communities and come to possess totally contradictory meanings offensive to unneighborly neighbors.

As relates to text, the Bible has been repeatedly mistranslated and misinterpreted for two mllenia, resulting in warring theological schools of thought, each intent on using scripture to humiliate and destroy the other, neither even able look at scripture itself and ask it what it truly intends to say. Broken marriages, murders, wars, termless imprisonment without charges or legal representation, militias roaming the land and Homeland Security bashing down the doors, rippng apart the contents, and traumatizing the owners of what turns out to be the wrong house.

Nothing like voice conversation. It would have saved me from writng this post.

Maybe ... text is -- dare I say -- the very devil? Hmm? You decide.

(Sorry, I'm wiped out, I know I ran out of steam a hundred lines before. I hope I made a little sense. You decide.)

That was a well reasoned, logical discourse about how easily we can misinterpret communications (written or oral) utilizing language. It is a complex process to filter out the grammatical and spelling errors and perform the semantic analysis to ascertain the true intent of the communication and then respond in a meaningful way. It gets screwed up so very easily.

I responded to your original queries as succinctly as I could, based upon my assumptions of the information you were seeking. I find it curious that other posters responded on an entirely different tangent.

I try to keep in mind that posters to this Forum (myself included), are often dealing with intimate, personal, emotional feelings and conditions that surround the usage of the Aneros massagers. As such, it is nearly impossible to avoid coloring our interpretation of others’ posts with totally unbiased thinking, but if we can keep our minds open and receptive, we just may be able to fathom the nuggets of truth/insight our fellow Forum members are attempting to provide.

I want to say first that defintions are not changeable in the context they are given. Being as the context is clinical, I used the clinical definitons.

My definitions come from websters dictionary and a few other encyclipedias. All state that sodomy refers to oral, anal and sex with animals. A few sources included the line anything abnormal or unnatural. That seems to sum up oral, anal or beastiality. You could probably add titsex, foot fetishes , or any number of other non vaginial/penial sex. You can look it up yourself. It took me a whole 2 minutes to flip through to dictonaries here at home and 3-4 online dictonaries. The ones that state that sodomy is just anal sex tend to be smaller definition sites. That is the only place I found "just anal" as the def.

Next, if a "heterosexual man" is soliciting you for sex.. he is by definition bisexual. Again per websters and multiple other medical dictionaries.

Anal stimulation in itself is not taboo, it is society that makes it taboo. You ever here the phrase "The mob rules Rome". It is true in the world as well. Whatever the majority in todays day and age agree on is considered the rule of the land. Few people are willing to feel left out and/or persecuted and so go along with the majority. It is true that there are alot of subcultures and bias. Which is why I felt it nessacary to correct your assumptions on sexual and relationship preferences.

You talk alot about semantics I am trying to clear up semantics. Your first problem is you make the bible as a reference. Admittly the word Sodomy orginated from the tale of Sodom and Gamora, however it has specific clinical definitons that realy only have the word orgin in common. Referencing the bible is poor form especially when dealing with technical terms.

I am openly bisexual and pagan, I have no problems with gays in facts I work with and have some good friends who are gay. They are human just like the rest of us. Again you are the one putting in word like "taboo" which give the negative undertones.

You point out that I presumed your negative tone, I think it is pretty obvious it was a presumption, thats why I stated it. I put no words in your mouth I mearly stated my opinion. The fact that you went on the defenseive quite to the extreme "can" be an indication I was right. Ill let the other posters decide. And in regards to puting words in your mouth I never claimed anything other then my opinion, you are now putting words in my mouth. I find it funny that you feel I was in "rage". When I myself stated at the begining I was unsure how to take your post.

A man who is married, or perfers relationships with women and still wants sex with a man is still "bisexual". I would refrain from using "straight" or "gay" only because there are multiple definitions and really have no clincal context. I don't know if there is a term yet defined that shows relationship preferance. Heterosexual, Bisexual, and homosexual all kinda got coopted into being used to describe that, however their clinical definitions do not imply relationship preferance, only sexual preference.

"Sexuality just is", is a true statement however, you are the one who started using the terms homo, bi, and hetero. My intent was to make sure that terminology used in the discussion was acurate, and to dispel the notion that the terms bi hetero and homo show relationship perference. Yes they are relativly new words, but they were designed to descibe sexual preference. They have been misused to mean things other then what they do mean. Again, this is why there is so much miscommunication in the world today when it comes to sex and relationship.

"But a more precise defintion would be "Having a preference or orientation towards being attracted to persons of the same opposite sex.""

See this what I mean, this defintion is less precise, because it fails to say attracted to what. You just gave a more general definition and one that is misused often. Physical attraction??, Mental attraction?, and attraction to the pleasure, attraction to the person, the body or the soul??? If you generealize a definition and make it more then it is, it causes all kinds of communication issues.

Words are just labels, thats what they are. All words are just labels. Its people who put positive/negative associations with them.

"All of Analpal's complaints against me are all about my supposedly wanting to sterotype all anal-hobbyist men as gay -- and in that there is an unmistakable undercurrent of there being something wrong or inferior about same-sex attraction."

True, this is what I stated, but like I said it more of the tone not the words. If I was wrong so be it, but using the terms like you did can mislead people.

"May be that my suspicion is basesless. I certainly don't think Analpal is gay, but his reply is of an entirely defensive and nearly every sentence can easily be construed as anti-gay".

I was debating weather to respond to this or not, to put that type of spin on my words calls for some good imagination. The fact that you choose to attack, careful and subtle, but an attack none the less says volumns about you wishing to divert attention from your yourself onto me. I did make one mistake and that was not putting a ? at the end the my line where I stated my opinion on the tone of your post. It really was more of a question then a statement.

Lastly your whole idea that definitions change and flow like the ebb of a tide is good way of saying I don't think your definitions are correct and you can't prove me wrong cause definition mean nothing. This is entirely false. Words can have multiple meaning however that is what context is for. Determining which meaning is relavent.

The phrase say "I want a fag" in England means I want a cigarette. I don't even have to go into the possible ways this could be misinterpreted. The fact is the context is an English man/woman is stating he/she wants a cigarette. You can't apply another definition simply because you don't agree. The same applies to the terms we use here. If your going to use the written word as a medium then you have to be true to context and definition. In the context that you are using hetero, homo, and bi, you are being clinical, which mean you need to use the clinical definitions. I have proved your clinical defintions are wrong.

I would like to take this point to also state that this is neither a personal attack or "rage" writing. I am mearly pointing out the flaws in your statements and defending why they are flaws. Anyone who is not comfortable with themselves could read your orginal post and construe it as negative, I pointed that out as my opinion. If you wish to continue to discuss semantics thats is fine. However, you can not state the reason for your defintions and then say defintions are meaningless anyway, if I accepted that as true, your own assertions are meaningless as well.

Ok last little thought before I head out and this a general statement, Sexuality is personal, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of your personal preferences for sexual pleasure or relationships. You just need to be honest and happy with yourself and with your partners

I'd like to say at the outset that I wasn't offended by your initial post and saw in it the honest curiosity which you have felt the need to clarify/justify in your later post.

I have to confess that I got a bit lost in your second post, and I mean no disrespect to you. I hate with a passion white text on black websites, and I only put up with it chez Aneros because there is no other like it for the particular subject matter. So your lengthy post started to swim before my eyes long before the end, but I think I got the gist. As I don't have issue with your 1st post there's, hopefully, no need for me to address the 2nd. Again to clarify, as we are apparently walking on eggshells here, it is the tedium of the white-on-black that elicits the "hopefully" ;-)

To address your 1st post:

1) Because it feels good, simple!

2 & 3) I was fortunate in my upbringing that I wasn't indoctrinated into the concept that anything anal was automatically 'dirty' so curiosity got the better of me, probably, well before puberty. (To give you an idea it was actually a surprise to me to discover at school that one was expected to wash after using the 'bathroom'.)I can remember getting a dose of threadworms while we were living in the tropics (maybe connected with the above..?) and the stirring of the worms in my anus as I settled for the night was, even at the tender age of 7/8 'interesting' long before I had any understanding of sexuality or arousal. I can still remember the tickling and the resulting hot flush. Later I experimented with fingers initially, and much later, a homemade rubber dildo. Various objects of, *cough*, vegetable origin have also been experimented with, but never got much satisfaction from. For the last few years but pre-Aneros masturbation has always been enhanced by a small vibe up the bum.

4) Post Aneros not much. Fingers are nice but only arousing, not orgasmic.

5) She once tentatively stuck a finger in my ring at a totally inopportune moment...(Although I'm in a hetero relationship sex has been non existent for years. )A previous was quite handy at, and enjoyed, rimming, as did I from both perspectives.

6) No, but being self confessed, (but unexplored) bi-sexual there's always fantasies :-)Strangely, I am only aroused by the idea of sex with a man, be it manual, oral or anal. I've never been sexually attracted to (fancied) any man in the way that I fancy women that I see. My male oriented fantasies only involve anonymous penises/anuses whereas my hetero ones involve specific women.

Some other 'points' of Q6 don't apply to me as an unfulfilled bi but I'll cherry pick the ones that interest me:

6.4 I wouldn't kiss.

6.5 Yes

6.6 I would imagine a that penis, skilfully and sensitively used, would be far superior to any dildo.

6.7 I can actually see where you are coming from with this, beyond the media hyped 'size matters' debate. I've done the ass stretching thing, girth doesn't turn me on. Long enough to reach beyond the rectal valves is all that matters.

7) Since using the Aneros (choice of 3 chez moi ) I have felt much hornier. I have considered sex with practically everything!

8 ) I have absolutely no hangups regarding my anal exploration and Aneros use. If I wasn't bisexual I still wouldn't have. I was, again, fortunate in having an older brother who had some very interesting books/magazines so I understood quite early in life, maybe just post puberty, that anything goes as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.For me my Aneroses are, collectively, the Holy Grail. I can honestly say that I have never experienced such intense and prolonged pleasure as I have since getting my first, the Helix, 4 months ago.

All kidding aside, what is clear from this lengthy discourse is that there are limits to communication within a forum like this. Likewise, it must be said the topic of sexual preference is inherently divisive. As far as I can remember, every time that it has been broached, it's sparked some kind of controversy here, with one or more users claiming bias or inaccuracy or worse. I guess it's the nature of the beast.

Given Man'sMan explanation, I for one, don't feel that he had some ulterior motive. It seems to me that he has questions about himself as much all of us, and that he was trying (awkwardly in the opinions of some :) ) to explore it. I'm tempted to say that he would have been better served had he expressed himself more succinctly, but then again, there are problems with that approach as well. I do however understand Analplan's original concerns, as there have been those in the past who've turned out to have some agenda or an ax to grind.

As others have stated more eloquently than I, some things are left better unsaid or in this case un-labeled.

I'm going to pick-and-choose here.1. Any idea WHY you are drawn to anal stimulation? it feels good.

2. How did you realize you like anal stimulation? I tried a finger while masturbating when I was a teenager. I had read that some people liked it.

3. Is Aneros your first exposure to anal stimulation? No.

4. What other forms of anal stimulation do you enjoy? Fingering, butt plugs, carrots, whatever.

6. Do you also enjoy occasional / freqeuent sex with men? If so (and these ARE serious questions): No.

7. If not engaging in sex with other men, is your use of Aneros making you consider it? Not at all.

8. Any other comments?To me, the only connection between anal stimulation and homosexuality is that men only have two holes--mouths and anuses. Gay men have anal sex because there isn't really much of a choice. I would enjoy being anally stimulated by a woman, either with toys, or with her fingers. I would not enjoy the same experience with a man, because I am not gay. I am aroused by the thought of any sexual contact with a woman, anal or or otherwise. But I'm not aroused by the thought of sex with men.

Hi Man's Man, When I read this post, I was not quite sure to make of it. Analpal had already responded to you at that time and I thought his response would stand for me because I did not "feel the love" in the initial post. The subsequent conversation has led me to go ahead and answer your questions straight up. grateful (By the way, your posts have provided some interesting reading :-))

Straight Guys:

1. Any idea WHY you are drawn to anal stimulation? I am in my 50s and have read many times, from a multitude of sources, that anal stimulation was supposed to feel good. It never had for me, but at various points (less than a handful :shock:) in my life I have revisited manual stimulation of my anus with consistently empty results. Reading how incredible it was supposed to feel and my reluctance to think I am unusual made me deduce that I must not be doing it right. The short answer is: The promise of something that felt really good.

2. How did you realize you like anal stimulation? Discovery of Aneros

3. Is Aneros your first exposure to anal stimulation?See above

4. What other forms of anal stimulation do you enjoy?None; I am content with this current expression.

5. Do you engage in anal stimulation (of self) with wife / girlfriend?With me, Aneros only and with my wife some one fingered stimulation during foreplay and intercourse.

6. Do you also enjoy occasional / freqeuent sex with men? If so (and these ARE serious questions): No (Recall that you were asking straight guys this question)

6.1. What is it that you enjoy about this kind of sex?

6.2. Do you engage in such sex with only other straight men or does their sexual orientation matter?

6.3. How do you differentiate being a straight man having this kind of sex from just being gay or bi? (Traditionally, straight men justify sex with men not making them gay if they are sodomizing rather than being sodomized.)

6.4. Are there things you won't do while having sex with men? (Such as kissing? Giving oral sex? Et cetera?)

6.5 For that matter, do you actually have any interest in anohter man's penis at all, apart from being penetrated?

6.6. Is being penetrated by a dildo, et cetera better, worse or the same as being penetrated by a penis?

6.7. Does penis size count?

6.8. Do you, by any chance, feel, right after orgasming during sex with a man, a sense of confusion, regret or even repulsion about what has transpired? Or anything other than happiness over a good joyous shared ejaculation?

7. If not engaging in sex with other men, is your use of Aneros making you consider it? No. I can recall one time, when I was in my teens, giving sexual activity with another male an honest consideration. A friend offered mutual masterbation. It took me less than a minute of thinking it through and decided I didn't want to. I am simply not physically attracted to men. (We remained friends). The Aneros isn't changing my orientation.

8. Any other comments? There have been a few posts since I have been reading this forum which seem to display a person's difficulty understanding the difference between pursuing pleasurable anal sensations and sexual orientation. Feeling good was good enough for me; and I never had eyes for Bobby McGee. I thought you might appreciate that! I hope the above has helped in your quest to figure out the below.

(Please understand I am not judging anybody and hope I am not being presumptuous or offensive. I am trying to understand something very basic about male sexuality, which I abandoned as foolish decades ago, but which has been reborn by virtue of Aneros making me keenly aware of how the anal muscles are intrinsically involved in EVERY type of male orgasmic experience while most men are conditioned never to be aware of any sensations coming from anything but their penis. In essence, this is no different from how many women never experience an orgasm till late in life if at all, because understanding of the clitoris has been sketchy and until recent decades, pretty much taboo.)

You're falling into the rather typical trap of "peer pressure" by asking this question.

What's masculine? Stupid things like hair (having lots of it), being unkempt, not looking after yourself and other pathetically awkward stereotypes are seemingly forced upon males in the west because it's "manly". Whereas in Imperial Britain, being a gentleman was considered "manly". In Ancient China it was considered "manly" to be well learned.The idea that a heterosexual man should abhor the idea of playing with his anus has nothing to do with real logic, but everything to do with the fact that homosexual men can pretty much only have physical intercourse using this method and stupid people like putting two and two together and then declaring it as a rule of nature.

Sticking something up your anus to stimulate your prostate has nothing effeminate about it, nor is it strictly "gay". It's another form of masturbation that has nothing to do with being sexually attracted to men or making yourself look/act like a woman (unless you like getting pegged, but that's a different discussion).

Wow, thanks, everybody for a wide range of responses. So many I have to print it all out and read them slowly.

This is exactly what I need, and it will make it so easy to write my article for Psychology Today:

"Anal Eroticism: A New Male Sexuality for a New Millennium"

I was going to call the article:

"Heterosexual Anal Eroticism: Straight Men Get Bent"

... but I can see now that you guys would have taken offense.

What a diversity of responses and I appreciate every one. I've decided that, because my goal here has always been to learn and not engage in a bitch fest, I am going to leave various differences of opinion as basically that. When it comes to issues of work usage there is just too much variation according to every kind of demographic axis. I pity the future archeologists who have to sort out the mess of language which the blog age will create. Questions as to words having meanings paradoxical to what they seem to say are pretty pointless in a world where this happens all the time. Life is too short.

I did note in skimming that somebody felt I was a victim of peer pressure and all I can say is I really doubt it -- I got tired of that scene decades ago. Also wanted to say that I too, among many spiritual journeys, have been a pagan.

And am getting kind of a giggle over all the hubbub over my choice of the word "sodomy" where I could have just said "buttfucking" and nobody would have much cared. While I am certain that the anti-sodomy laws reference ONLY anal sex and nothing more, know for certain that medicine does not use "sodomy" as the clinical definition of anything, am basing only the root meaning of "sodomy" on the Bible (and then not the oriignal Hebrew Torah but the notoriously flawed King James Version) , would never consider consulting any source less authoritative than the Complete Oxford English Dictionary, and find that, as a Mensa member never scoring below 99th percentile standard verbal test I've ever taken, little about the English langauge is a surprise to me --

-- if somebody claims to have consulted sources which list multiple definitions for "sodomy" or any other word, I believe them -- and am not surprised. If one wishes (as I don't) to use "sodomy" as a formal definition, then, in the existence of a multitude of alternate usages, one would be bound to settle on the most common, usuallly original, usage. I'm not surprised such alternates exists, but what DOES surprise me is that I grew up in and live in the south where I would have thought such a definition would have reached my ears if in common usage. I would be surprised, however, if any (source written in modern times) claimed any primary definition besidies "anal sex".

(To be even sillier -- if one is going to deal in absolute definitions, one must be entirely precise, I suppose, in usage of such words as "legal", "clnical" and "definition".)

That such a word ever came to be defined as referring to anal sex and then became blurred to cover a multitude of sins goes back to the very negative societal view on homosexuality from the time of the Spanish Inquisition on, and the propensity of two millennia of Bible translators to be unable to distinguish between the morals of their times and what the authors orignally wrote and intended in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. (Catholics therefore thought for centuries that Moses had horns.) Since they had no word for it, and words like "iniquity" and "carnality" so imprecise, they used "Sodomite" and from that "sodomy" was born.

(An interesting ancedocte to underscore the last paragraph: I went to a "Gay Mass" a few years ago, held on the Feast of Saint Ingatius. There were priests in attendance from a number of local parishes, in an attempt to show support to gays. The main priest was attempting to express this support (I think in relation to Ignatius who was (please correct me, Catholics) the patron of the rejected or some such thing) -- by saying that, certainly, Christ loved gays, just as he loved prostitutes, thieves, murderers. May as well have added on child-abusing priests.)

Sooo ... if there are definitions which attach more meanings to sodomy, it is only because ignorant people from Sodom to Seattle have lacked imagination and blamed same sex-oriented people for every abomination known to man.

I still find it curious I have never heard sodomy used to refer to anything besides anal sex. But I also, as I've stated before, don't see that logic language go hand in hand. (Thus straight men having sex with same.)

A funny thing that happened after the invention of the printing press -- people started learning to read -- but not always very well. Control over literature and lanaguage has ever since been an arm wrestling match between wealthy elites and much more populous (and in my opinion, worthy) common folk. I wonder if the advent of the Internet will finally stardize English but I doubt it. The war over language, between maintianingi absolute, formal definitions and accepting fluid popular slang s really somewhat silly. All language is born as slang, so formalists are merely clinging to what formalists of an earlier day abhorred. And, taken all the way back, all currently used language is derived from nothing more than grunts, right? Going back as far as existing manuscripts will allow -- a few millennia, I find remarkable is that: 1) any modern word still contains any kernel of its root word's meaning; 2) almost ALL langauge is ENTIRELY derived from slang idioms built upon idioms built upon idioms. Which is to say that language in actual use is nothing but repeating and hearing, with understanding derived from context and definitions changing each time a snipped of language is reused.

And formal definitions and the dictionaries which contain them -- while useful and necessary -- are only transient vessels of language, never able even to encompass all current and historical usages of a given word, and in attempting to do so can be so amorophous as to become useless outside of scholarly activities.

I'm not trying to win any arguments, here, just throw some more light on an complicated and insoluble debate. To close, let me just reiterate that, yes, I should have used more precise language than "sodomy" but, no, in common usage, it does not mean anything outside of anal sex. And it is all so very silly because men who like men never should have been mistranslated as "sodomites", "homosexuals" or anything. Such men they are not referred to at all in either old or new testament. (Wait a moment before you object.) What IS referred to is heterosexual men having sex with one another. (Most famously in Romans, chapter 1 I think?) No moral judgement her from me, I'm just referrencing the original ancient texts. The Bible makes absolutely NO statement whatsoever, pro or con, regarding same sex couples, who were, as it turns out, allowed to marry and share the same rights as male-female couples up through the end of the first millennium and to some extend halfway through the second.

I think Bible mistranslation makes an interesting case study from which we can recognize exactly why quibbling over what any word means is pretty pointless. Words are as illogical as the people who use them. The very language drift which may allow "sodomy" to also include a love ot putting one Fi Fi per week in the microwave in praise of Baal is also currently totally usruping the "traditional" (after less than 150 years of existence) definitions of "heterosexual" and "homosexual".

I will have to research the actual medical terms used in these cases. It would be interesting if, like everything else, those are taken from Latin, with ancient Rome being one big proud, loud orgiastic bathhouse.

Let's everybody just chill. Everybody's wrong and nobody's right! And someday we'll all be dead leaving other silly men to argue over this craziness! Nobody ever said (I hope):

"Worry, be sad"

or

"All worries, mate!"

or

"Drugs, be in it. Life, just say no."

... but when they say:

"It's all good"

... I just want to scream, "What? What's 'all good?' Do you have an original bone in your body?

Like I said, let's all chill. You say potato, Dan Quayle says "potatoe," let's call the whole world "sodomy."